Have you ever wondered what the likelihood is of getting any one of the myriad side effects mentioned at the end of a drug commercial on TV? Ever wanted to get the information easily, without researching old clinical trials or wading through Web page after Web page of consumer comments?
Brian Overstreet, president of Healdsburg Internet startup AdverseEvents.com, thinks he's got the answer.
In the back of an olive green Victorian office building on Center Street, Overstreet and two researchers are mining the contents of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration database that documents prescription drug side effects reported by doctors, pharmacists, drug companies and consumers.
The data, which Overstreet said is full of flaws such as countless drug name misspellings, is "cleansed" and refined using a 17-step computer algorithm. The results are then put into a form that is user-friendly and fully searchable, something Overstreet said has not been done, despite the best intentions of drug companies, physicians and the FDA.
"Everyone is doing their best, but the reality is best is not good enough and that's where we're trying to come in," said Overstreet.
AdverseEvents has compiled the reported effects of some 4,000 approved medicines, and cleansed more than 3 million side effect reports in the FDA's database going back to Jan. 1, 2004.
The site is currently free for consumers. Overstreet hopes to sell data and related analytical tools to pharmaceutical companies, insurers and hospitals. Ultimately, he would like AdverseEvents to become the J.D. Powers & Associates or Consumer Reports of the prescription drug world.
"Our goal is to become the central, verifiable source for prescription drug data," he said.
But the FDA cautioned against using its database on side effects to calculate the incidence of adverse events in the U.S. population.
"First, there is no certainty that the reported event was actually due to the product," FDA spokeswoman Sandy Walsh said in an email.
Overstreet, 39, came to Sonoma County from San Diego three years ago, after he bought a home in Healdsburg with the long-term plan of retiring in the area.
In San Diego, Overstreet and partners Robert Kyle and Henry Duong founded a company called Sagient Research Systems, which produces and sells specialized financial and pharmaceutical research to companies worldwide. Overstreet is still a partner in Sagient.
The seed for AdverseEvents was planted about two years ago, when the wife of one of his partners had a bad side effect from a prescription drug.
"Like everyone else, we tried to do a Google search," he said. "We could not find any reliable data."
Overstreet and his partners initially funded AdverseEvents with their own money, then did a small seed round of funding last spring. The company is now seeking venture capital.
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